The present invention relates to a portable electronic mail apparatus which is used for transmission/reception of an electronic mail while being mainly carried by a user and a storage medium storing a program for the portable electronic mail apparatus.
Transmission/reception of an electronic mail, heretofore, have been performed by use of a desktop device such as a personal computer or a device inconvenient for movement between places. By progress in the semiconductor technology, however, there has been, in recent years, on the market a small-sized portable information terminal (hereinafter referred to as a portable terminal), of an electronic notepad size, which is provided with an electronic mail function which transmission/reception of an electronic mail can be performed. The portable terminal contains a communication capability or is adaptable for connection to a communication device such as a cordless telephone and the like. Therefore, by purchasing a portable terminal, a user can perform transmission/reception of an electronic mail in a variety of places.
A conventional portable terminal (portable electronic mail apparatus) provided with the above described electronic mail function, however, has the following problems.
A device of this kind having features of a small size and lightweight is naturally requested from a viewpoint of user""s portable use. This request for the features causes a problem that a memory capacity is limited to a certain value, which in turn entails a small capacity, allotted to storage of an electronic mail.
If a memory capacity for an electronic mail is small, electronic mails cannot be stored in a very large number. Hence there arises a need that each time when an electronic mail comes to be unnecessary, the mail has to be erased in order to store an electronic mail which arrives next time. For this reason, the problem has come to the surface in the form of reduction in operability and convenience.
In the mean time, a portable terminal (portable electronic mail apparatus) has an advantage that a user can perform transmission/reception of an electronic mail in any place where the user wishes to, whereas this advantage works in an inverse way in cases. Hereinafter, this will be explained.
The user must pay attention of place when he or she reads the mail. For example, when a user who serves in a sales activity stays in an xe2x80x9cAxe2x80x9d company office who is one of the customers and the user retrieves and read an electronic mail sent from a xe2x80x9cBxe2x80x9d company who is a competitor to the xe2x80x9cAxe2x80x9d company or when a user wishes to retrieve and read a private electronic mail in the working time in office. In any of the above cases, it is undesirable that a received electronic mail is read by others.
A portable terminal has an especially high degree of danger to get lost since the terminal is used being carried by a user, which is another problem. If a portable terminal gets lost, there arise cases where a received mail cannot be read not only immediately after received, but forever according to circumstances. Especially when an important electronic mail has been sent, a damage to be caused by the loss can be immeasurably large.
There exists a danger as described above in a portable terminal. To avoid such a danger has been desired as well.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic mail apparatus which has improved operability and degree of convenience.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there can be provided a portable electronic mail apparatus comprising:
receiving means for receiving an electronic mail;
specific mail detecting means for detecting whether or not an electronic mail received by the receiving means is a specific mail which meets a specific condition;
transmitting means for transmitting an electronic mail received by the receiving means; and
control means for controlling the transmitting means to transmit the specific mail to a predetermined destination.
With the first aspect, an electronic mail which is detected as the specific mail among received electronic mails is transmitted to a predetermined destination (an address to be transmitted or to be transferred) which is preset. Thereby, there can be read a mail, which has been transmitted to a mail address at another mail address.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there can be provide a portable electronic mail apparatus comprising:
receiving means for receiving an electronic mail;
storage means for storing an electronic mail received by the receiving means;
specific mail detecting means for detecting whether or not an electronic mail received by the receiving means is a specific mail which meets a specific condition;
transmitting means for transmitting an electronic mail received by the receiving means; and
control means for controlling the transmitting means to transmit an electronic mail which has been detected as the specific mail by the specific mail detecting means to a predetermined destination, while controlling the storage means to store an electronic mail which has not been detected as the specific mail by the specific mail detecting means.
With the second aspect, an electronic mail, which is not detected as a specific mail among received electronic mails, is stored. Thereby, there can be read an electronic mail, which is not detected as the specific mail.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there can be provided a portable terminal, which comprises:
receiving means for receiving an electronic mail;
storage means for storing an electronic mail received by the receiving means;
specific mail detecting means for detecting whether or not an electronic received by the receiving means is a specific mail which meets a specific condition;
transmitting means for transmitting an electronic mail received by the receiving means; and
control means for controlling the storage means to store only part of an electronic mail which has been detected as the specific mail by the specific mail detecting means, controlling the transmitting means to transmit the electronic mail to a predetermined destination, and controlling the storage means to store an electronic mail which has not been detected as the specific mail by the specific mail detecting means.
With the third aspect, there is left behind part of a received mail detected as the specific mail among received electronic mails while the received mail is transmitted to a predetermined destination (transfer address). Thereby, it can be at least recognized whether or not a mail detected as the specific mail has been received.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there can be provided a storage medium storing a computer-readable program, the program comprising:
reception processing program code for receiving an electronic mail;
detection processing program code for detecting whether or not an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code is a specific mail which meets a specific condition:
transmission processing program code for transmitting an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code; and
control processing program code for controlling an electronic mail detected as the specific mail by the detection processing program code to be transmitted by the transmission processing program code to a predetermined destination.
With the fourth aspect, an electronic mail, which has been detected as the specific mail among received electronic mails, is transmitted to a predetermined destination (transfer address). Thereby, there can be read an electronic mail, which has been transmitted to an mail address at other mail addresses.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there can be provided a storage medium storing a computer-readable program, the program comprising:
reception processing program code for receiving an electronic mail;
storage processing program code for storing an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code in a memory;
detection processing program code for detecting whether or not an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code is a specific mail which meets a specific condition;
transmission processing program code for transmitting an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code; and
control processing program code for controlling an electronic mail which has been detected as a specific mail by the detection processing program code to be transmitted by the transmission processing program code to a predetermined destination and controlling an electronic mail which has been detected as a non-specific mail by the detection processing program code to be stored by the storage processing program code in the memory.
With the fifth aspect, an electronic mail, which has not been detected as a specific mail among received mails, is stored. Thereby, there can be read an electronic mail, which is not detected as the specific mail.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there can be provided a storage medium storing a computer-readable program, the program comprising:
reception processing program code for receiving an electronic mail;
storage processing program code for storing an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code in a memory;
detection processing program code for detecting whether or not an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code is a specific mail which meets a specific condition;
transmission processing program code for transmitting an electronic mail received by the reception processing program code; and
control processing program code for controlling only part of an electronic mail which has been detected as the specific mail by the detection processing program code to be stored by the storage processing program code in the memory, controlling the electronic mail to be transmitted by the transmission processing program code to a predetermined destination, and controlling an electronic mail which has not been detected as the specific mail by the detection processing program code to be stored by the storage processing program code in the memory.
With the sixth aspect, there is left behind part of a received mail detected as the specific mail among received electronic mails while the received mail is transmitted to a transmitted side (transfer address). Thereby, it can be at least recognized whether or not there has been received a mail detected as a specific mail.